What a portfolio does

A portfolio puts several strategies into one simulated account and shows how the mix would have done together.

A single strategy answers one narrow question: when was it worth holding BTC (Bitcoin), or gold, or chip stocks? Most people don't own just one thing, though. A portfolio lets you put several strategies side by side, give each a share of one example account, and see how the whole mix would have behaved: one equity line, one set of metrics, one list of trades.

It's a simulation of the past, nothing more. Golden Path Strategies never buys or sells anything for you, and a portfolio isn't a recommendation for how to split your savings. The pie on the Home page (BTC 40%, Stocks 25% and so on) is an example of what a board can look like, not advice.

Why bother combining strategies

Every strategy on the site is long-only: it either holds its market (Long) or sits in cash (Flat). A BTC trend strategy can be Flat for months; a gold strategy can lag for years. Put a few together and their good and bad stretches partly cancel out. The board shows you by how much: Max Drawdown tells you the deepest combined fall, the Equity chart shows how much smoother the line got, and the Allocation chart shows how much of the account was actually invested on any day.

That last point surprises people: because each strategy steps in and out on its own schedule, a portfolio is rarely fully invested. Some of the account is almost always in cash, waiting for a strategy to turn Long again.

How the simulation works, in short

The account starts at 100 on the first day of the window. Think of it as 100 dollars, or simply as 100%: it's there so that every portfolio and every Buy & Hold line starts on the same scale.

  1. You give each strategy a share of the account, for example 20%.
  2. When that strategy turns Long, it buys with 20% of whatever the account is worth on that day, paid from cash.
  3. When it turns Flat, it sells and its share goes back to cash.
  4. In between, the position simply rides with the price. Nothing is topped up or trimmed.

The details, including what happens when cash runs short, are on How the simulated account moves.

What you see on a board

Open any portfolio and you land on its board. The Overview tab holds the combined result; the Strategies tab shows each strategy with its own chart.

[Golden Path [GPS]: 1. Overview and Strategies, 2. Apply range for the Start and End dates, 3. the chart tabs, 4. the equity chart, 5. the Weights panel.]

Above the chart you can replay the mix over another period with Start, End and Apply range, or the 1Y to All pills. The chart has five tabs (Equity, Allocation, Current, Correlation, Trades), explained on Reading the portfolio charts. On the right, the Weights panel shows how the account is divided: first into classes such as Crypto and Stocks, then into markets such as BTC, then into strategies. Under the chart you get the same metrics as on a strategy card, worked out for the whole mix.

The Strategies tab on a board and Strategies in the top menu are different things. The tab sits just under the portfolio's name and keeps you on the board; the top menu takes you to the list of all strategies.

A few words you'll meet

A class is a group of markets: Crypto, Stocks, Gold or DCA (a plan that buys BTC bit by bit), plus Cash. A ticker is one market inside a class, like BTC, SOXX (a US chip-stock fund) or XAU (gold). A weight is the share a class, ticker or strategy gets. Rules are optional: they let one strategy's Long or Flat signal change the mix over time, which is what a dynamic mix means. A board without rules has a static mix that never changes.

The ready-made boards carry [GPS] (for Golden Path Strategies) in their name. They're the defaults, and they're the best place to start: see Default portfolios to explore.

What you need a plan for

Anyone can open the default portfolios, with charts and numbers up to the free cutoff about three months ago. Building, duplicating and editing your own portfolios, bookmarking them and setting alerts need a plan. If you click New portfolio without one, a window titled "Build your own portfolios" explains that and links to the plans. See Free and paid access.

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